Itinerary for Basque Country and Navarre

Bilbao to Lekeitio is a hour drive and another hour to Getaria. Getaria to SS in a half hour. One can see Getaria in a couple hours and my guess is that Lekeitio is probably the same. If you want to condense stays it seems like it would be easy.

The last time we visited Burgos we stayed at Abba Burgos Hotel. It’s about a five minutes walk from the cathedral and has its own parking garage. I love Burgos’ cathedral with the tomb of El Cid and Doña Jimena, his wife.

Depending on when your flight departs, you may want to reconsider Segovia as your last night stay. It’s an hour drive from the airport with no congestion or construction. The road from Segovia is a toll road, but at least it’s a motorway. Signage for returning rental cars at the airport is much better than it used to be.

As a Basque local, here are my recommendations:

3 days in Bilbao, visiting Guernika (and looking for other day trip recommendations with public transportation) YOU MAY WANT TO ADD BERMEO AND MUNDAKA.
Then we will rent a car and do the following:
1 night in Leitikeo (LEKEITIO), the place where I used to spend my summer vacation, OK
1 night in Getario (GETARIA), I think that a day trip from Donostia-San Sebastian would be enough.
3 nights in San Sebastian, visiting various towns in the region including Hondorribbia, St Jean de Luz, Bayonne, and Biarittz; and others (HONDARRIBIA), you may want to add Pasai Donibane to these visits. Biarritz, IMO, lacks interests, it has a name as it was once the vacation town for the rich and famous...but nothing much to see there, really.
Last three days:
Then drive and visit Vitoria-Geseiz and tour the Rioja wine tour route, visiting various towns along the way and then spend (VITORIA-GASTEIZ) OK, one night in Laguardia or Haro make sense.
1 night in Laguardia

Hi Mikel,
Do you think we should add a day in SS in order not to stay in Getaria, or should we stay two nights in Leitikeo?

Getaria is really small and at an easy reach from Donostia-San Sebastian, so you may want to spend another night in D-SS and take a day trip to Getaria and enjoy a meal at the great seafood restaurants there (my favorites are Astillero and Mayflower...on a much higher end are Elkano -Michelin star- and Kaia-Kaipe). I think one night in Lekeitio is good enough, unless you want to stay two in order to visit the neighboring towns of Ea, Elantxobe, Ispaster, Natxitua, Markina...

(hope you don´t google Leitikeo...you´ll not find Lekeitio on the instructions :):):):))

Is there a Michelin restaurant that you recommend that is worth what they charge?

There are quite a few in Donostia-San Sebastian that are probably worth the money. And another one in Getaria, Elkano (the first person that circumnavegated the world was not Magellan, but Elkano, his second in command, born in Getaria). A 1 star Michelin is normally worth the money as food will be absolutely great, but there is a very wide choice of excellent non-starred restaurants all over the BAsque Country, a mecca for gourmands.

So I am just wondering if we should cancel our overnight reservations in Lekeitio and Getario, and base ourselves in Bilbao for the first four days and in San Sebastian for the last 4 days, using public transportation to see various places from Bilbao, and using our car to travel around from San Sebastian...or is there another recommendation for a good place to base ourselves.

I am also looking for a recommendation for favorite restaurants at all of the towns that I have mentioned.

It makes sense, there´s a direct bus to Lekeitio and public transport is excellent in any town.

There are so many wonderful options and so many decisions to make.
We asked about skipping the overnight in Getaria and were told that makes sense, and that we should add a day to SS.

However, when we look at the photos of the view from our hotel room in Getaria, it makes me want to stay there for two nights and have some time to relax and look at the water, rather than skip the overnight stay. If we did that, we would reduce, the stay in SS to only two night (rather than three or four nights there). Couldn't we as easily day trip from Getaria as we could from SS? We were told that SS is only worth one night anyway. Is that true?

Alternatively, should we spend less time in SS and spend more South toward Laguardia, and then end up in Madid thorugh the Rioja Region, Burgos, Segovia and other places?

We have 11 days altogether and I would appreciate any other thoughts about our itineray.

Unfortunately even if you had 3 or 4 weeks you still couldn’t spend the amount of time you’d like to in all the excellent places there are to visit. You’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. Good luck deciding.